I voted for multiple towns, because, well, if we have a mega city with Blaze and Wind the leaders, it would be a giant Cerberus. Honestly I don't want it to be a giant Cerberus. I may be the only one, but I think having a couple cities running both offering different (I guess you could say lifestyles) enables the people to choose, where they think is best.

I voted multiple cities because I don't want to be there when the community out grows the original city and I would like to continue Cerberus in it's current state. There are a couple problems we will face if we go with a mega city:

#1. It will work great for the first little while but as the community grows again through welcoming new players it will become stale. Groups of people will want to do their own thing, creativity will be limited and in the end people will move on to their own towns or simply leave the server if we limit that. This will defeat the purpose of the mega-city and leave the leaders in a bad place.

#2. Someone will be left to lead the city when it's time has passed.

It will eventually die like Dawnbay did because Minecraft is a game based around creativity and people will want to move on to newer places full of adventures where they can express themselves. Of course it won't be as fast as Dawnbay because of organization and our current small community but as the players start to flow a single city will not thrive.

A single city will eventually get boring and I don't think anyone wants to be left to lead a mixing pot of ideas from people who don't even live in the city any more. I guarantee there will be some kind of reform a while down the road if we make the mega city and it will either be torn down and rebuilt in the vision of the "new owner" or simply abandoned. You can't force a town to be successful just by making it the only option.

It's better for us to make two cities at the start, it may be a small choice but it still is a choice. If both cities build themselves up well and leave new players with a hard decision upon joining the server it will be a much better atmosphere. People like to feel free and the freedom to choose where you live is the foundation of that in this game.

What if we split the settlements into villages, towns, cities and kingdoms?This would have many benefits and would prevent a research gap for new settlements that aren't willing to take on the process of starting from scratch. It would also make it easier for niche groups of people(4 friends who join the server for example) to carve their own place in our lands without losing the benefits of living in a city. It would be something like this:

Villages must be in a kingdom and consist of 4-10 people, villages are basically an extension of the kingdom's capital and share research with them. All villages will have a road directly to the capital and will have minor limitations set by the leader(s) of the kingdom such as minor taxes to keep the kingdom going, land limitations as decided by the leaders of the kingdom and any other possible restrictions. Villages would allow smaller groups of people who have an idea and want to run with it to get a foundation without having any gap between them and the more successful cities, they would start off with the research of whatever kingdom they were under and would contribute to that research as if they were part of the capital city its self.

Towns within a kingdom would be larger villages. If a group of people chose to start a town outside of a city they would be required to have 10 people to be recognized and would have to start from scratch on research.

Cities are simply larger towns. They would require an exceptionally large population and would only be for the most successful settlements.

A city that started as part of a kingdom but became successful enough to be it's own state could resign from being part of it's kingdom assuming they had a similar population size to their capital. This would be to prevent any issues that might come up if a city ends up being very popular. For example it would have been odd for Cerberus to be under the rule of Sanctuary once it took off and Sanctuary slowed down. I'm not sure how research would be decided in this case, I think a penalty relative to the population difference between the city and it's kingdom's capital would be fair.

We could start with 1-2 of these kingdoms, we could either have the biggest settlement after x amount of time become the first official kingdom or we could make the first two "successful" settments become kingdoms. Kingdoms would have their own law, there would be no set in stone rules. They would be assigned enough land to easily support a capital city and a few towns and would be free to work in any way they like as long as they kept an acceptable level of activity.

Of course settlements could be made outside of kingdoms with no problems. They wouldn't be recognized until they met the requirements to be a town but otherwise things would be like they are now for anyone who wants to go way out and make a town. I think my number of 10 people to be considered a town both within or outside of a kingdom is fair.

What would you guys think of this? Modifications would obviously have to be made but I think this might be a good start towards finding a way to combine the idea of a unified leadership and the freedom to go off and build a town of any theme as long as you have a few people to support you in it. Unwelcoming kingdoms would probably fall quickly so I don't think there would be any issues of a village wanting to start but having no one willing to accept them.

It's a busy day and I typed this over 3 sittings. I read back over it quickly but I have to go again, sorry if there are any repeated thoughts or silly sentences. I will properly edit it later but I wanted to get it out there because I don't know how long this discussion might go before a decision is made.

As..interesting as this system is, I think that kind of thing requires a lot more people for it to properly function, and I'm not entirely sure that people would be fond of being taxed.

With that being said, after a lot of careful thought, I decided to vote for multi-towns, as this helps give people more freedom than being confined to one mega-city, which, as some people have already mentioned, has some flaws to it.

As..interesting as this system is, I think that kind of thing requires a lot more people for it to properly function, and I'm not entirely sure that people would be fond of being taxed.

Taxes wouldn't be necessary, just an option. As I said all kingdoms would have their own laws, for example if I lead one and my co leader(s) had no objections it would probably look something like this:

Villages wouldn't be taxed. They would be given a set size limit that would be as generous as the space trusted to me by the community would allow.

Towns would have a one-time expansion tax. This would be as much to make sure they're serious as it would be to earn any profit off the land they would be given. Ideally it would be slightly less than whatever price we decide to put on building an independent town.

Cities would be handled individually because I doubt many of them will exist.

Of course other kingdoms might choose to have annual taxes, taxes for their villages, larger taxes for their towns or whatever else. This would make them all unique and provide even more options. It's all up to what the owners think is fair, if a kingdom is too greedy it will pay for it and if a kingdom is too easy on people it will run out of land to spare and money. It will be a balance and it can't do anything except encourage uniqueness because it will be easier to run with a theme for a town while adopting all the benefits of the big cities.

It's really just an idea but I feel it would solve the problem of a single city taking everyone else over while also encouraging people to make new settlements because it will only help the capital city if a town within it's kingdom ends up being successful.

I'd also like to specify that I'm not directly endorsing this idea over the system we have had in the past. I'm mostly offering it as an alternative to the mega city plan because I just don't believe that is going to work.

Last edited by Wheeind on Wed Jul 25, 2012 7:17 pm; edited 2 times in total

We don't need to call them kingdoms. I just thought it was an easy word to describe what I was getting at. The capital city and it's leaders as a whole would act as the "king", Blaze and I have agreed that we will continue with the same leadership system for Cerberus as long as no one else wants a chance to run for mayor.

If we were to lead one of these kingdoms it would be done between us as the city of Cerberus, not an individual dictating the actions of any villages/towns that want to be under us. Like I said earlier in the thread, the foundation of my idea was to make getting a new village/town off the ground easier and to hopefully tighten the bonds of our community's settlements so people don't view it as a competition. A little friendly competition is never a bad thing but I think having each village/town have an opportunity to start off with friends in high places will be a great encouragement for people to get out and put together ideas without the risk of failure as long as they can maintain the kingdom's minimum resident limit.

The villages would start with all of the research the capital has(the requirement of a library in the village for this to happen seems fair to me) and kingdoms would be able to sponsor/help upcoming cities because of the mutual benefits. If we can manage to start off with two viable cities and build them into kingdoms I think we will do just fine.

You mentioned other servers and so I assume you're referencing the knights and kingdoms kind of RP servers, this isn't really a medieval "castle on the hill above a bunch of villages" kind of thing. Consider it more of an alliance if you want, we can change the word kingdom if that scares you guys.

I will state it again, this was mostly proposed as an alternative to the mega-city and a "fix" for any problems of cities becoming too successful and drowning everyone else. I would rather just do things the way we have in the past but if things must change I don't think we're likely to find a more stable option than this one.

Last edited by Wheeind on Wed Jul 25, 2012 6:49 pm; edited 1 time in total

I was going to edit my last post but I think this deserves it's own post to make sure it's seen by anyone who might have more to add or be interested.

One of the problems/repercussions of my plan is land management. Having 1-2 people designated as land surveyors per kingdom would be ideal.

These people would make sure no villages were dangerously close to the boarders both inside and outside of the kingdom to prevent any overlapping or expansion issues.

They would make maps and recommend places for the kingdom to encourage villages to settle in.

They could also map out roads and trails through our lands and hopefully organize the wilderness a little more. This would be a great job for any explorer types who want to be included actively in RP.

If well trusted enough by the kingdom they could even organize land clearing/forest restoration projects/ect. to keep things tidy and ready for new villages.

Of course this kind of job would have to be done by someone active and well trusted by the capital's leaders, it would be hard work managing the coordinates of everything and wouldn't be a casual job to spend a few minutes on every week.

I hate to say it but someone able to make a map similar to what Kairus was making of our first map except on a smaller scale would be ideal. If we found people willing to manage it they could have their own threads to keep updated with boarder info and rough locations of everything.

The bare minimum of this idea would be the boarder management. Someone has to know exactly where a kingdom's boarders are and where villages and towns are in relation to those.

That would be much easier to organize and patrol if the borders were perfect squares/rectangles. That way all someone has to do is walk in a straight line... Just my thoughts on borders...

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We will go back to our old system, leaving Wind's kingdom system for a possible later date.

First two towns that PM me a list of at least 5 of their members as well as the name of their town gets a 'free town'. Afterwards, towns will need to be made following the [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] Once the server is up, which it shall be soon, locations will be picked for these towns.